


The Nameless Thing

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Gen, Historical, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:09:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3321851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canada as a young man wants a thing he doesn't feel he will ever be able to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nameless Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of old fic on my tumblr. Canada->Fem!England, set sometime after 1815, but still in the early 1800s. Whether his feelings and desires are in any way requited is up to you.  
> Elaine is my name for f!England.

Matthew is far too old to need a hug and someone stroking his head after a bad dream. Even discounting the many years he has lived in comparison to a human, he has still slowly grown-up as a Nation, as Canada, his spine lengthening and his shoulders broadening out, baby fat receding from his face and body to leave him pleasantly lean, a handsome (he has been told, society says), if sometimes still a little charmingly clumsy, seventeen year-old boy. Man. Boy-man.

He doesn’t dream like a child anymore.

Matthew is far too _old_ to need a hug and someone stroking his head – but he doesn’t turn either of them down when they’re offered by England, not when she comes barefoot to his room within moments of him yelling himself awake one long night, her green gaze sleepy but concerned in the glow of the bare candle-flame she shields with one hand. The candle leaves flicker-dancing shadows on the walls as Elaine sets it down on Matthew’s nightstand – and Matthew feels his mouth dry, watching her, his throat and belly suddenly burning like he’s downed too much drink. The Devil’s in the drink and the Devil of the Sea’s sitting on Matthew’s bed, her hair unwinding from the braid she’d put it into for sleep like slivers of curling gold champagne, bubbling sticky-sweet and going straight to Canada’s head.

The candle’s glow shines through Elaine’s pale nightgown, turns her skin to amber and her illuminated outline to shadow that Matthew drinks in, drinks down, swallows up with thirsty eyes. She doesn’t seem to have noticed the fact and Matthew flushes, guiltily, when she lays a distracted hand on his brow, wipes away the sweat of nightmares and draws his gaze up and away from the promising glimpses of her curving form. Meets her eyes again, low golden lashes and sleep all round the corners; Matthew wants to lean in, take-taste the yawn he can see lingering on her lips.

(Eyes are supposed to be the ‘safe’ place to look at upon a lady. There’s no such safe place on England.)

She’d likely slap him if he told her. Send him from her, back across her ocean to his own home, with her red scandalised mark still bright upon his cheek. And like a child, like a child, then, Canada would obediently bow his head and have to go.

“A bad dream?” Elaine inquires softly, and Matthew’s skin feels warm, warmer than it ought to, closing his eyes and leaning into his guardian’s touch, so soft in the night’s dim, into the slick golden feeling roiling up inside.  “Dear heart, you screamed as though you had the hounds of hell itself howling at your door.”

Matthew breathes, head reeling, slow in, slower out. Elaine shifts closer, her fingers sliding into the hair at the nape of his neck, drawing Matthew’s shivering head down to her shoulder, to the scent of roses and lye. She means it as comfort, surely, the embrace a loving guardian’s duty, but even as she kisses his temples like a mother would Matthew feels heat beginning to prick insistently in his cock, arousal slowly stoked higher by the warmth of England’s body through her gown, his hands returning her hold and finding the welcoming slope of her back. His mind dearly hoping his own nightshirt isn’t as see-through, that its looseness will hide the problem rising in his nether regions.

“Do you wish to speak of it?” England asks him, quiet, and Canada mutely shakes his head against her. The dreams are nothing now, and will come when they will, smoke and fire and mud and cold, whether he speaks of them or not. (Guilt sets in young, it seems, for Nations.)

Indelicately, indecorously, Matthew would have Elaine as a woman rather than as a mother, as a sister, have England as a woman the way a man has a woman – hell, as a man has another _man_ should it bring her pleasure that way. Elaine smiles sometimes, brief little nothings that feel like a great deal of _something_ indeed, and Matthew thinks maybe, _maybe,_ but the letters she writes him are as stern as ever, her tongue sharper, and she kisses him chastely whether she be in the garb of a whippet soldier or a comely lady. She’s as quick to cuff him for his mistakes in either dress too, deadly with a musket and lethal with a fan. She does not –

Elaine does not _look_ at him. For that. That which he wants. Like that.

Matthew turns his head – instinct -, mouth grazing England’s neck where the skin is soft and tender still, leans into his guardian’s offered warmth until he can feel her breasts push against his chest with every slow breath she draws into her lungs. Canada is tired, tired and heavy and still far too aware of Elaine in his arms, her fingers stroking through his hair and lips against his crown. Plying her just as gently haunts his pleasanter dreams, thoughts of unbuttoning gleaming buttons of military jackets, unlacing corset-ribbons, smoothing a hand up England’s thigh and finding the bare expanse of skin beneath her nightgown. Her touching him back, her gaze as intently fascinated as it has ever been studying a map, stepping through either dust or snow to see a new world’s sights, twirling a gleaming brooch between forefinger and thumb so its rich jewels can twinkle in the light.

Matthew wets his lips, trembles, and digs his hands more firmly into the cloth covering England’s back. He doesn’t – he shouldn’t dare, but he’s _burning,_ it feels like, hot in his cheeks and even hotter in his prick, a fire fed by fancies that he wants, that he _wants –_

That is not his to want, for to stand at England’s side is to stand some ways behind her.

“…Madam,” he says, breathes in heady roses again as Elaine makes a startled sound at the break in the sudden quiet, pauses in her petting when Matthew raises his head. She’s close enough for kissing and that is temptation enough – so Matthew kisses her cheek softly, lingers and hopes Elaine will blame it on the drowsiness still lingering between them. Lies, because if his guardian stays too long he will no doubt do something stupid. “I believe I am quite recovered now, thank you.”

England just smiles at him, seemingly pleased with the gesture. “You are quite sure?”

“Quite,” Matthew says – perhaps a little too quickly, for Elaine laughs, no doubt thinking him embarrassed. Matthew’s cheeks obligingly burn. “Besides, madam, would it not be…” he hesitates. “People might think it… _unseemly_ , to discover you in my bedchambers.”

“Unseemly?” Elaine looks surprised – and then snorts. “I will not have others telling me what is and is not to be found _unseemly_ in my own home; I do not care to listen to it, however quick they may be to offer an opinion. Besides – there is no harm in it. This.” Elaine’s smile returns again, and as she cups Matthew’s cheek with her hand Matthew feels his hopes beginning to tentatively rise. “You are my charge and my care, are you not? Your well-being is my concern, and, since we are of the same ilk, I am the most well-equipped one in this household to understand what it is that your well-being requires.”

Of course. Matthew’s hopes crash and burn, and he lowers his eyes again. Studies Elaine’s collar-bone almost resentfully in the light. “…Thank you, England.”

“It is nothing,” says England, kisses Canada’s forehead again and finally pulls away in a rustle of fabric, rises from the bed. She takes her candle again, and with the light source between them her shadows disappear, leaving England standing in white and gold. “Sleep well, Matthew.”

“And you, madam.” Matthew forces himself to smile, duck his head slightly in an affectation of a bow. He receives a nod of Elaine’s head in reply, the sight of her back as she turns and takes her light with her out of the room, closing Canada’s door quietly behind her.

In the darkness left behind Matthew waits, listens until the house’s floorboards stop creaking away from him, and then touches himself, shucking up his nightshirt and hissing as he palms his neglected cock, pumps himself to ease the ache Elaine has left there. Shamefully, it doesn’t take much to bring himself to completion; the room still smells of roses and lye soap, and Matthew’s mind is still full of memories of gold and champagne and softness, England’s touch on the nape of his neck, his cheek. Canada imagines her saying his name, her hands where his hands are now instead, slim fingers meshed with his fingers, thumb swiping against his cockhead and making him come, keep coming, spill in a hot rush over his belly and thighs.

The night air cools Matthew quickly, and he leaves bed, wipes himself down with an old cloth and puts it to the side so that the maids will take it, but England shan’t see it should she once more enter his room. When he goes back to bed, cheek pressed to the cool pillow and thoughts still churning, sleep doesn’t come for a long time.

(In the morning, the servants inform Matthew that Lady Kirkland has already left the house to attend to business, and so when Matthew breakfasts he is quite alone at England’s table, with no-one to ask about the shadows beneath his eyes.)


End file.
